In Shift, Harkin Delays Vote on Labor Secretary

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, left, talks with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez during the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Program at the Department of Justice January 11, 2011 in Washington.

The vote, originally scheduled for this Thursday, will happen May 8 “in order to allow those Senators who have asked for the time to request additional information” to evaluate the nominee, said Mr. Harkin, who is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that conducted Mr. Perez’s confirmation hearing.

Mr. Harkin said he continues to believe the confirmation has “no impediments” and signaled he might be granting more time to win Republicans’ support. “I am confident they will reach the same conclusion that I have, and that they will join the bipartisan array of business leaders, elected officials, civil rights leaders, and worker advocates that strongly support Mr. Perez’s confirmation,” he said. Mr. Perez, who is currently head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, was a former Maryland labor secretary.

Republicans contend Mr. Harkin delayed the vote for a different reason: He was unhappy to learn Republicans had invited an anti-Perez witness to testify this Thursday at a separate subcommittee hearing on workplace whistleblower laws. The invitee was involved in a whistleblower case against the city of St. Paul, Minn., that the Justice Department had refused to join. That refusal was part of a controversial deal Mr. Perez helped reach to get St. Paul to withdraw a Supreme Court appeal of a case that posed a threat to a strategy the Justice Department uses in housing-discrimination cases.

A Senate Republican aide said Mr. Harkin cancelled the whistleblower hearing as soon as he learned the witness had been invited, and then postponed the vote on Mr. Perez.

Mr. Harkin said he canceled the vote to give Republicans more time but canceled the whistleblower hearing to prevent an inappropriate attack on Mr. Perez. “Our Republican colleagues decided to use this as an opportunity to attack the President’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez. I chose not to allow this abuse of process,” he said.

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